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Re: To Bb or not to Bb

Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2014-11-21 23:46

Stan wrote:

>> I could imagine a piece which had climactic sustained notes which would either be throat Bbs or clarion long pipe Bs, depending which horn you played it on. (And I'm not going to think hard enough to tell you which would be which.)

>> And I don't care how well you play, or what mechanisms your horns have, or what your name is, those 2 notes will not sound the same*. And depending on the mood of the piece, one or the other might be preferred.

>> The composer should know good notes from not so good and write the melody lines accordingly, so you should end up with a piece that sounds better on A, or better on Bb. Even if only marginally so. And not necessarily the easier horn to play it on.>>

And Chris Peryagh wrote:

>> The B-A#s in the first movement aren't a problem if you happen to have a full Boehm, therefore keeping the ends of the phrase in the same register.>>

Because the readers of this BBoard may not have access to the successful players within the profession, I'd just like to make a couple of comments:

The fact that a Bb on the A clarinet is not easily made indistinguishable in isolation from an A on the Bb clarinet, or that a Bb on the Bb clarinet is not easily made indistinguishable in isolation from a B natural on the A clarinet doesn't mean that the 'difficult to make resonant' notes are necessarily bad IN CONTEXT.

People who think that you should always play the notes THAT ARE THE BEST suffer from a limited view of music. Some notes need to be 'good', others are better left 'bad'.

I think that Stan understands this. But his comments might be interpreted to mean something different.

And note the caveat 'easily', above. Every good player I know can produce an acceptable Bb in almost all contexts. (Of course, that's at least partly because they control many aspects of that context themselves, by how they play what comes before and after.)

To Chris Peryagh: I don't know any established professional who routinely plays on a full Boehm Bb instrument; and further, I certainly don't know any clarinet player who routinely and successfully sidesteps the standard fingering for Bb (perhaps with resonance additions) by using the overblown low Eb.

You do the list a disservice by suggesting that as a course of action to the innocent reader here.

Tony

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